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Superdrug heralds skin cancer breakthrough

TONY EASTLEY: Researchers at the University of New South Wales say they've made a breakthrough in treating the most common form of cancer in Australia.

Trials have shown a new superdrug can reduce basal cell carcinomas and potentially spare patients from undergoing surgery.

The hope is that an expanded trial will show similar results in combating the more aggressive and often deadly melanoma form of skin cancer.

Simon Santow reports.

SIMON SANTOW: Called Dz13, the DNAzyme drug zeroes in on the cancerous cells.

LEVON KHACHIGIAN: We found that there was tumour shrinkage in the majority of patients and that the molecular target of the drug was suppressed in every patient.

SIMON SANTOW: Levon Khachigian is a professor of pathology at the University of New South Wales.

Over a decade he's used the technology to target a bad protein. And this time the more that was used the more effective it was, and with little or no side-effect in the patient.

LEVON KHACHIGIAN: The target of the drug is a master regulator that controls many genes. These are the genes that control tumour growth and spread.

And the way the DNAzyme works is that it sends the tumour into a death spiral that triggers the body's own inflammatory and immune system to go into battle to injected legion and cause shrinkage of the tumour.

This treatment does open doors because of the target of the drug. And the target of the drug is actually quite a common denominator in a number of diseases - not just skin cancer, but ocular diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, even heart disease.

SIMON SANTOW: Professor Khachigian is the lead author in the study published today in the medical journal, The Lancet.

Skin cancer is often described as Australia's national cancer. Only a third of all Australians will escape the clutches of basal cell carcinomas by the time they reach the age of 70.

A smaller number will be diagnosed with a melanoma and that form of skin cancer is much more aggressive.

CATRIONA MCNEAIL: Melanoma actually causes the death or around 1400 to 1500 Australians every year.

SIMON SANTOW: Dr Catriona McNeil is a staff specialist in medical oncology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. She's involved in the next phase of trials targeting melanoma and starting in a few weeks' time.

CATRIONA MCNEAIL: Although there has been quite a lot of activity in the last five or so years with the development of normal therapeutics, it's still a disease that we can't cure and it's still a disease for which there are a significant number of patients for whom the available therapies don't work.

SIMON SANTOW: Dr McNeil is hoping to increase the dose of the new superdrug in patients with melanomas in the hope that similar encouraging results we be achieved. She expects to get meaningful results in about a year's time.

CATRIONA MCNEAIL: It's going to take a targeted approach. And the process of developing therapeutics in a rational and safe way is laborious and so that's the frustration, particularly when you have patients sitting in front of you who you know are desperately unwell, that the time it takes to develop therapeutics and the money involved in order to do that is quite hefty.

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